Abstract

This qualitative study of Youth Training (YT) is centred specifically around
the experiences of trainee professional footballers.
Presenting a case-study analysis of one professional English Football League
club, it utilizes those methods of sociological enquiry traditionally associated
with ethnography (i.e. participant observation, unstructured interviews,
and documentary analysis) in order to explore the day-to-day lives of the
individuals concerned.
The study depicts the way in which YT recruits are socialized into
professional football club culture and how their career expectations and
aspirations are subsequently shaped by the detailed complexities of
institutional experience. In turn, it looks at how trainees learn to adapt to
their chosen occupational position, and uncovers their attitudes towards
such diverse topics as educational attendance, inter-personal relations and
masculine construction.
Set against the historical development of football apprenticeship within
England, the work examines the impact of new vocational policy upon the
football industry as a whole and portrays the role of the Professional
Footballers' Association (PFA) - and its subsidiary body The Footballers'
Further Education and Vocational Training Society (FFE & VTS) - in relation
to the implementation of YT provision. To this end, it attempts to determine
the extent to which modern-day forms of football traineeship differ from
those methods of indenture employed in previous years.
At the same time, the study provides insight into the personal and social
lives of the trainees in question. Notably issues of class, sexuality and gender
are raised in terms of individual experience and interpretation.
Furthermore, the influence of club officials is also considered in relation to
the pressures, pitfalls and constraints of trainee development.